Saturday, 22 October 2016

Shopping and Sticking

I've been struck down with a gut bug the last two days, so I was quite pleased this morning when I woke up feeling much better. Well enough, in fact, to take a trip into central London to do a bit of hobby shopping. First port of call was 4D Model Shop, then onto Dark Sphere near Waterloo. Of course, my journeys weren't helped by various line and station closures on the Underground.

Anyway, I got all the bits I was after (I think) and a few other bits I hadn't planned on but had had in mind to buy at some point.

So, the haul:

Everything on top of a stack of four 25x310x600mm styrofoam

Some Raging Heroes "Jailbirds" character figures

Card sleeves for my Gruntz and Chicago Way decks - might need another

Airbrush stuff

Painting sticks and wires for my hot-wire cutter(s)

The styrofoam is intended for my Mexicagrave project, to make up terrain boards and pyramids.

The Raging Heroes figures will get painted up during the Challenge. I'm not sure at the moment whether to keep them on individual bases or do a bit of a diorama with them as a group. I had hoped to get a Coyote Crew pack, but they didn't have any in stock.

And I've just realised as I'm writing this that I accidentally picked up cleaner rather than thinner for my airbrush. Oh well, you can never have enough cleaner when you've got an airbrush. I'll just have to add thinner to the order I'll be placing with SnM Stuff shortly.

Well, that's enough of that, on with the rest of the post.

Once I'd had a bit of time to recover from the shopping trip, I decided it was time to put those painting sticks to good use. So, I grabbed the box containing my 6mm ACW stuff and set about sticking them onto the sticks for priming and painting.

In case you are wondering, on these sticks there are enough figures for 10 mounted cavalry regiments, 8 dismounted cavalry regiments, 4 artillery pieces, 30 generals/staff and the horse teams for 8 limbers. I still need to glue the wheels onto the limbers before putting them onto painting sticks.

I'll have a few spare mounted and dismounted cavalry figures. From the mounted, some of the command groups are destined to go on the dismounted cavalry bases (for some reason, the packs contain 1 command strip and 5 skirmisher strips, rather than 2 and 4 which would make more sense). The rest will get individually based as couriers/tempo point markers. The extra dismounted skirmishers could get used as infantry skirmishers I suppose.

The generals will be used to make up 3 command stands for each army and the remainder will go onto infantry and cavalry bases as brigade commanders.

My plan for tomorrow is to do some more sticking of figures onto painting sticks, bases or washers. Oh, and placing a few orders over the old interwebbything. You see, I've been making some plans for this year's Challenge...

@ Simon Q - I find using the airbrush quite handy. Mostly it's for primers, basecoats and vehicles but I might be trying some fancy stuff with it on a couple of figures this winter. I need some practice first to see how feasible it is first though :)

@ Brendon - Not prepping already? Are you feeling OK? I've decided to be fairly organised this year and try to get everything ready to go, rather than have to take time out from painting to do more prep during the Challenge :)